


Sweet Dreams

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, artsy and experimental, vaguely season eight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been almost a decade since Jess's death, John's death, Stanford, escape. Life shouldn't be this way. But what else could it be for the children of Hunters?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Dreams

Every morning when Sam wakes up, he turns off the alarm and kisses his wife.

(Except he doesn’t, because he doesn’t have a wife. He uses his phone instead of an alarm clock because he never got around to buying one.)

Jess likes to make breakfast. Sam can’t cook, but he pays her back by doing the dishes. Jess likes to mock how meticulous he is, how neat. He flicks dishwater at her.

(He eats alone. In echoing hallways, between library shelves, in his bedroom with the door shut tight. Sometimes Dean eats next to him, when their schedules allow. Sam always cleans up after himself. Methodical motions. Meticulous, neat.)

The water makes speckles on the paper that spackles the refrigerator. Lists from Sam and notes from Jess and crayon drawings, paper assignments, dinosaur stickers Dean bought the kids for one birthday or another. That reminds him—it’s time to wake them up. Lilah pads downstairs in a rainbow sweater and mismatched socks. Sam braids her hair and tries not to remember that she’ll be in first grade in the fall. At least Nate is still a toddler. Sam doesn’t think he could take losing both of his children at once.

(The refrigerator is bare. There are no children in the bunker, no children in Sam’s arms. No ring on his finger, no Dr Seuss books on the shelf. No dinosaurs watching.)

Sam goes to work. He’s a lawyer, of course. He drives a nice car and takes Lilah to kindergarten. He watches her go. He waves goodbye.

(Sam stays inside. Because he doesn’t have a house that smells like baked goods or a condo overlooking a city. He has a musty room in a bunker fifty feet underground. It’s cramped. But somehow, even that small space feels like too much.

When the claustrophobia hits him, there’s not much he can do but close his eyes and tell himself, “This will pass.”

The mercy is, it always does.)

***

Every night when Dean goes to sleep, he wraps his arms around someone. He can’t tell you who. It’s a secret. A secret even Sam doesn’t know. Not that Dean wants to keep secrets, but… this is private. This is his.

He holds them. And there’s always an instant, a breath-catching second, when he worries that he won’t be held back. But then the arms fall around his shoulders. Dean holds tight like he’s a kid or he’s drowning, breathes in that soft, warm human smell, and knows what it is to be safe. To be wanted.

(His bed’s always cold when he gets to it. Sinks down, facedown into a pillow. Somehow, it doesn’t matter what he eats, drinks, or does—every night, he goes to bed with an ache in his gut, and eyes too tired to stay shut. No one to hold him, no one to catch his secrets and murmur them back into his ear, cleansed and gentle with rest. Nobody home, and they never will be.

But Dean doesn’t mind. A cold bed is better than no bed at all.)

Dean thinks about what he’ll do tomorrow. In the morning, he has to mow the lawn. Check out that rattle in Baby’s engine and pray it’s easy to fix. Clear out that vampire nest on the edge of town. Try that stain remover trick, see if that gets the blood out of his green shirt. Buy milk. Oh, and he has to call Sam. It’s almost his birthday after all.

But before all that. Before that, he’ll make breakfast. There’ll be pancakes and hash browns and eggs over easy, OJ, spinach and tomatoes from the vine. He’ll make, eat, and clean up a feast, and he won’t do it alone.

(In the morning he’ll have half a pillow down his throat and a crick in his neck. There’ll be a bottle somewhere with his name on the lip. If he’s lucky, he won’t touch it till lunchtime.)

But right now, right here, there’s a name on his tongue and a hand in his hair, and he feels… something. It’s a feeling he doesn’t know how to describe, like peace and anticipation and the feeling of rain on the roof of a house, but it’s a good feeling, a feeling he likes, and that’s more than enough. Dean falls asleep easy as a fall into bed.

(It’s four AM. Dean throws back the sheets, sits up and says, “Fuck this.”)

***

(Sam’s already up when Dean gets to the kitchen.

“Bad dreams?” he asks, looking up from his laptop. The screen paints his face shadowed and blue, the color of bruises and the bags under his eyes.

Dean makes a sound like a laugh. “You could say that,” he grunts, and opens a beer.

Oh, what he would give to have bad dreams.)


End file.
